The Red Sox sure are suckers for a utility guy who can sort of play all over the field, aren’t they?
This is the point of the offseason where we look around and really take stock. The hot stove has been turned off and we’re tidying up the kitchen. Spring training is around the corner. While there are still a few stories to play out (ahem! Bregman) it’s increasingly likely that his path won’t cross with ours. Don’t get me wrong—I’m with Avery; we don’t need Alex Bregman.
And Craig Breslow may have pulled his last thread of the offseason in acquiring Abraham Toro.
I’ve seen plenty of Toro because he was a Seattle Mariner in 2021-22. I live in Seattle, and I know that Jerry DiPoto & Co. are firm believers in the Magical Thinking School of Roster Construction, much like the Red Sox, particularly at designated hitter. (That’s a long story, but I’ll stick to Toro here.) Of the 82 games Toro started for the Mariners in 2022, about a quarter of them (18) were at DH. Even my girlfriend and her son, new to baseball as they were, groaned every time he entered the on-deck circle because even they knew that a sub-.200 batting average wasn’t gonna cut it. Toro’s slash line with the Mariners in 2022 was .185/.239/.324.
And yet the Mariners kept sending him out there. While we can certainly factor in the “offense-sapping mystery” that is T-Mobile Park, Toro has played for three other MLB clubs. He’s not going to become the hitter we were hoping for simply because we happen to own a Green Monster.
Toro has been known to come up with some big moments, and to string together some sweet offensive bursts, but he would never be called clutch, and even to be considered streaky, he’d still have to get on the field a lot more than he ever has. Toro simply doesn’t play enough. Even most of his more impressive moments came at one moment in time, as he joined the Mariners in 2021 after a trade from the Astros. Here’s what he did:
- He reached base safely in his first 18 games as a Mariner
- He compiled the second-highest batting average in Mariners history for a player’s first ten games (.432, minimum 25 AB, highest is Ken Griffey…Senior. Yes, I was surprised too!)
- He hit a home run in his last two games for the Astros, and his first two games for the Mariners. Since he slid from one team to the next, literally walking across the field to join the other dugout, that’s four games in a row featuring a Toro homer.
He has a penchant for racking up even quirkier records. Again, these are from his early Mariner days:
- That trade that I mentioned, that sent him from the Astros to the Mariners in 2021? It was a mid-series trade, so after crossing the field and suiting up for the Mariners, Toro hit a historic home run. That made him the first-ever player to homer both for and against a team in consecutive games. You don’t have to squint too hard to see the similarity to Danny Jansen’s trade-related MLB record from 2024, when he technically played for both the Red Sox and the Blue Jays in the same game, due to a rain delay followed by a trade between the teams.
- I wonder if having back-to-back seasons rostering a fairly obscure player who set an oddball record by being traded is perhaps another one for the record books. Put one down for the Red Sox.
- Toro became the first player in MLB history to hit a grand slam off a pitcher he was traded for earlier in the same season. (The man is walking quiz show. In case you’re wondering, the pitcher was Kendall Graveman.)
So that’s all fun. And historic. But Toro’s slash line is .220/.285/.353 over 365 games in 5+ years with four teams: the Astros, Brewers, Mariners, and A’s. He was DFA’ed by the A’s last season, ultimately chose free agency, and here we are.
Dan stated earlier this week on this site that Toro will remain in the minor leagues all season, unless “he’s completely turned himself into a different hitter, or something has gone seriously wrong.” I wish I could be that certain. I’m not convinced he’ll stay in Worcester—and I sure don’t think he’ll become a different hitter. We all know how Alex Cora loves a utility player, and we’ve seen more than our share of Quad-A players make it to the Red Sox big-league club over the past couple of years, a direct result of our non-spending era. I’d like to remove the temptation to put Toro on our MLB field by not having signed him at all. (There’s me, wishing for the ability to time travel…again.) And I do consider it a temptation for Cora. We’ll see what happens.
This is not exactly the Red Sox/Mariners crossover I was hoping for. Did the baseball gods hear me wish for a “former Mariner” and send Toro instead of Teoscar?